


A New Day

by sophiagratia



Category: Good Wife (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 06:54:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiagratia/pseuds/sophiagratia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Sex was a strange way to reconcile, but perhaps no stranger than any other way they might have found.</i> Set sometime mid-season-four.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A New Day

She’s going to make Kalinda come. 

It’s never happened before. She’s never been this close before. 

This close: Kalinda’s fingers fisted in her hair; the involuntary jerk and sway of Kalinda’s hips; Kalinda’s ragged breath and ragged voice, whimpering her name, over and over her name. The taste and smell of Kalinda; the way Kalinda moves to the pressures of her teeth and lips and tongue, the push and curl of her fingers, her grip on Kalinda’s thigh. Kalinda’s hand in her hair; Kalinda’s voice; Kalinda’s cunt under her mouth, around her fingers. 

She’s going to make Kalinda come. 

She wants to say it aloud. _I’m going to make you come, Kalinda; come for me, Kalinda; Kalinda, Kalinda, Kalinda_. But she doesn’t dare lift her lips even for a moment, so instead she just whines against Kalinda’s skin. And that makes Kalinda’s whimper wordless, high and long, so she keeps doing it. 

‘Alicia Alicia Alicia Alicia Alicia,’ high-pitched and barely voiced, almost a sob, Kalinda’s voice, saying her name. Kalinda, incapable of anything but a fist in her hair and the chant of her name. 

Never mind the neck cramp; never mind the numbness of her lips, her tongue; never mind her desperate need to take a breath. She presses hard against Kalinda; she speeds the push and curl of her fingers inside Kalinda, more than she can stand; she grips Kalinda’s thigh and wills her tongue to move, flat and fast against Kalinda’s clit; she’s going to make Kalinda come, and nearly frantic with it, moans against Kalinda’s skin until it’s more than she can stand – 

And then Kalinda cries out loud, and the cry becomes her name, then short successive sobs that syncopate the grip and release of Kalinda’s muscles around her fingers, and Alicia takes a breath at last. 

She rests her cheek against Kalinda’s thigh; releases the grip of her hand, which Kalinda grasps for, clings to, whispering, ‘Alicia.’ She curls her fingers one last time inside – Kalinda cries out once more, weakly – then slowly moves to lay her hand across Kalinda’s cunt. She kisses, softly, slowly, the inside of Kalinda’s soft, warm thigh, then rests there, eyes closed, breathing. 

* 

Kalinda: invulnerable in leather and the sharp spring air, crossing the river on foot, casting a glance out over it like she owned it. Alicia watched her walk, and thought, _no, not like she owns it – like she’s bigger than it, like it’s irrelevant to her, like it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to her if the bridge just disappeared underneath our feet_. Kalinda in her thigh-high boots with heels best described as talons – Kalinda would just keep walking. Alicia – picturing her own awkward tumble to her death while Kalinda, hips swaying, walked on air – smiled to herself and hustled to catch up, proud that she’d learned again to run in pumps. 

‘Hey,’ she called, ‘it’s coffee, not a catastrophe. Slow down.’ 

Kalinda grinned over her shoulder. ‘Coffee’s not important? Catch up.’

Kalinda: not invulnerable but intensely compromised. 

For weeks, Alicia played in her mind the loop of Kalinda’s hands shaking as she fumbled for her notebook, the first and only time she’d seen Kalinda terrified. She played it over and over to arm herself against it. She said her own ‘No’ to herself, over and over, arming herself. 

She rewrote their entire history, with angry precision stitched and stabbed the central lie into every moment of their history. But through it all ran that one image: Kalinda’s shaking hands, Kalinda who wore her terror in her body.

*

By the time Alicia learned that it wasn’t invulnerability but compromise that gave Kalinda that armored look, it was entirely too late. 

But much earlier, far more quickly than Kalinda would like if she knew, Alicia had learned that Kalinda wasn’t as good as she thought she was at keeping her story straight. There were fixed points: Catholic school had to be one, else how does a Kalinda Sharma come by strings of gospel, stuck to her like a receipt from a past that might call to collect? On some points, Alicia could rely. But by the time of Lockhart Gardner Tradition Number Five, she had already collected three or four details that would never quite sit still. Sometimes she felt she held the fragments of Kalinda’s story in her hands, moving and leaping, anxious creatures. 

‘Kalinda –,’ Alicia would start, every time it occurred to her to start the conversation about those mobile, frenetic details. 

And ‘Going now,’ Kalinda would say, already – as she always was – halfway out the door. 

It was hard to get the stitches to stick, when the history she found herself rewriting was itself in constant motion.

It didn’t take Alicia long at all to learn that she, somehow, merited a kind of care from Kalinda that Kalinda never gave to anybody else.

It did take her a long while, too long, to notice that that care never faltered, never came apart, not even at the worst. 

*

Crossing the river on foot, Alicia threaded her arm through Kalinda’s. She felt the bridge beneath them, the space beneath the bridge yawning beneath them. Kalinda avoided her eyes, cast her gaze out along the river, toward the expanse of the lake. Not irrelevant to her, this bridge, the river, the lake, the shifting perspectives of carefully curated architectural lines – they framed her. For a moment, they _were_ her. 

Kalinda stayed. Alicia said that to herself, once, twice, and then again, aloud. ‘You stayed.’ 

Kalinda looked at her. ‘Yep.’ 

‘Why?’ Alicia knew better than to ask. 

Kalinda stopped, turned, took Alicia by the shoulders, and kissed her. Then turned again, a precise heel-pivot, took Alicia’s arm again, and walked on, half-dragging Alicia half behind her. It was an answer, of a kind. Kalinda’s kind of answer: all body and no words. Kalinda, who wore all she was in her body.

‘…Okay,’ Alicia said.

Kalinda smiled. ‘Okay,’ she said. 

* 

Sex was a strange way to reconcile, but perhaps no stranger than any other way they might have found. 

‘It’s not about _women_ ,’ Kalinda said to calm her nerves, the first time, midafternoon on Alicia’s couch. ‘It’s me. Just me.’ She kissed her and said, ‘You’re just here, with me, now.’ And she took Alicia’s hand and guided it up her thigh, under her skirt, and said, ‘Here. Just touch me.’ Another kiss, and the suggestive tilt of her hips. ‘You’ll know when I like it.’ 

Alicia learned quickly, learned Kalinda’s body, where and how to touch, to kiss, to lick and bite and touch again. She learned Kalinda’s repertoire of gasps and moans and muscle-twitches, when to push past resistance and when to honor it. She learned how much more there was to learn, this whole vast language of Kalinda. 

‘But it can’t, Kalinda – _Kalinda_ – it can’t be just now, only now,’ Alicia said, the third or fourth time, gasping, backed up against the door of a stall in an unfrequented thirteenth-floor ladies’ room. 

‘I stayed once, Alicia. I can stay again.’ Kalinda smiled against her cheek, twisting her wrist so that Alicia’s hips bucked and shook the stall. ‘Not here, though.’

Alicia laughed and kissed Kalinda hard and laughed again. ‘No, not here.’

*

‘You know,’ Alicia said slowly, leaning as if casually against the island in her kitchen, ‘it’s been months and we’ve never once slept together. We’re scarcely ever even _naked_ together, I mean, it’s –’

‘Months?’ Kalinda smirked. ‘Are you counting?’

‘Yes,’ Alicia said. ‘What are you afraid of?’

‘I’m not afraid.’ That was a lie. But Kalinda wanted it to be true, and that counted for something. ‘You want us to… _sleep_. Together.’

‘Kalinda, I’m not asking you for –’

Kalinda shook her head and lay a finger over Alicia’s lips. Then she set down her beer, slid down from the counter, and taking Alicia’s hand in hers, pulled her toward the bedroom. She shut the door and crossed the room and turned. Without a word, eyes locked on Alicia’s, she unbuckled her belt and dropped it. She reached back and unzipped her dress. She shrugged, and it slid from her shoulders; she shook her hips, and it pooled on the floor. She unzipped one boot, then the other, and kicked them from her feet. She reached beneath her slip and rolled her stockings down and off, her eyes on Alicia’s all the while.

Alicia fumbled for the buttons on her shirt, stumblingly undressed herself, watching Kalinda watch her. Watching Kalinda repeat the theme of the dress: winding her hands through the straps of her slip; the shrug of her shoulders, the shake of her hips. Then the sigh as she shrugged again, and her bra slid down her arms and onto the floor, and she stood there naked, still holding Alicia’s gaze. 

And then she turned her back to Alicia and waited. Alicia hesitated, but after a moment she stepped close and lifted her hands to Kalinda’s hair, its own complicated architecture. She began with the bobby pins, pulling them one by one, dropping them carelessly on the floor. The set of Kalinda’s shoulders shifted; Alicia could see the goosebumps form, the fine little hairs that stood up on her neck, her shoulders, her arms. Slowly, methodically, bobby pin by bobby pin – they made the faintest _clink_ against each other as they fell – Alicia’s hands worked, pausing to run her fingers through each fall of Kalinda’s hair. At last, she pinched the catch of the big clip that bound the mass of it together, and the tangled tumble that fell across Kalinda’s shoulders, much farther down her back than Alicia expected, made Kalinda gasp, almost stumble.

Alicia paused to press a kiss behind Kalinda’s ear, run her hand across Kalinda’s hip, hold her close around her waist. Kalinda inhaled sharply and shifted, just slightly, giving just a little of her weight, and maybe just a little of herself, to Alicia’s strength. 

*

That and Kalinda’s tug on her hand bring her into the present. 

‘Alicia.’ Another tug, and Kalinda’s raw voice. ‘Come here.’

It’s hard to leave the perfect repose of her cheek against Kalinda’s thigh, her hand still resting protectively across Kalinda’s cunt. But with a kiss at the juncture of Kalinda’s hip, and a caressing hand across Kalinda’s belly, she crawls up the bed to lie beside her. 

Kalinda turns into her embrace, tangles her ankles with Alicia’s, palms her cheek and kisses her. Draping her arm across Alicia’s ribcage, propping her head on one hand, Kalinda looks at her a long while. ‘You really like doing that?’ she says at length, as though it’s a real question.

Alicia kisses her and laughs around her kiss. ‘Are you kidding?’

‘No,’ says Kalinda, very serious, toying with an end of Alicia’s hair. 

If Kalinda’s eyes are shining a little too brightly for the dark, Alicia doesn’t mention it. She brushes her cheek and pulls her close and whispers, ‘Yes,’ against her mouth. ‘Very much.’ Kalinda closes her eyes and kisses her like it costs her something. 

‘Tell me – what you like.’ If Kalinda’s voice catches, Alicia pretends not to notice. She pretends she’s not being tested and steals another kiss. She smiles against Kalinda’s mouth, she brushes Kalinda’s hair back over her shoulder and runs a hand down Kalinda’s back to press her close. 

‘The way you taste,’ she says, smiling, kissing, smiling again, ‘the way you smell. The way you move. The sounds you make.’ Kalinda’s hand on her hip, Kalinda’s fingers winding in her hair, Kalinda’s mouth against her jaw, her throat. ‘How wet you are, before I even start. How you tell me to go slow, then move so fast I can’t. The way you taste –’

Kalinda bites her lip, hard enough to hurt. ‘You said that one already.’ 

Kalinda’s voice so low, so serious, makes the steady flush of her arousal newly urgent. Alicia presses close against her, stutters. ‘The way you taste – Kalinda, _touch me_.’ 

Obedient, for once, Kalinda winds her hand between Alicia’s thighs, and sighing, grateful, Alicia opens for her. ‘Like this?’ Kalinda whispers, dragging a finger the length of Alicia’s cunt, pausing with pressure on her clit. 

Involuntary, Alicia’s hand slaps against Kalinda’s back, pressing her in, close, impossible to be close enough. ‘Yes – _yes_ , like that.’

‘Alicia,’ Kalinda whispers, closing her eyes, forehead pressed to Alicia’s, almost entirely still – but for her hand, moving slowly, one single fingertip dragging, circling, drawing Alicia out. ‘Alicia.’

And Alicia is only there, only where Kalinda touches her, reduced to the focal point of Kalinda’s fingertip slowly moving. Kalinda’s stillness, Kalinda’s focus – ‘Kalinda,’ Alicia breathes. ‘Kalinda, I’m so close –’

‘I know,’ Kalinda says. And slides two fingers deep. Alicia gasps; Alicia’s hips twist; Alicia clutches at Kalinda, kisses her, blind, haphazard kisses that Kalinda returns with taut precision. Kalinda’s fingers, the only moving part of her, draw long, slow arcs, deep inside. Alicia gasps and whimpers, she struggles for air, holds hard to Kalinda and her stillness. 

‘I know, Alicia,’ Kalinda says, and she does, because suddenly she presses hard, the heel of her hand hits hard, and she kisses her hard, and holds her kiss through the long, shuddering climax that takes her entirely over. 

‘Alicia,’ Kalinda whispers again, kissing her slowly and slowly caressing her back into consciousness. 

Alicia’s eyes flutter open. She hadn’t known she’d closed them. She wraps her arms around Kalinda, holding her close. She kisses the top of Kalinda’s head, smoothes Kalinda’s hair, does her best to breathe. 

When she pulls back, a little more composed, she finds that Kalinda’s cheeks are damp, the set of her jaw tense. It’s Alicia’s nature to ask; all of Alicia’s instincts tell her to ask. Instead, she sweeps her thumbs across Kalinda’s cheeks and kisses her, her lips and her brow and the salt-tasting bridge of her nose. ‘Thank you,’ she says, and makes no further remark. 

Kalinda only pushes her back against the bed and curls into her arms and stays there, silent. But what Alicia needs to know is in Kalinda’s emphatic limbs, the precision of Kalinda’s cheek against her clavicle, the frank, communicative poise of Kalinda’s hands, Kalinda’s honest hips, Kalinda’s perfect stillness. She may not be one for talk, but in Kalinda’s body lives an eloquence entirely her own.

Alicia still wants to ask. But she consults what she has learned: this is one way, perhaps the best way, Kalinda has of making herself available, making herself vulnerable. And the best way, perhaps the only way, to accept this gift is wordlessly. 

So she quiets all her questions and in the quiet and the dark, she holds Kalinda close.

* 

When she wakes, Kalinda’s gone. 

Coldly naked, she feels the starkness of that absence strongly for a moment. For a wild, half-conscious moment she wonders if she’s dreamed it all – until she sees the note stuck to the headboard. Kalinda’s compact printed capitals are framed to the left by the hasty, graceful sweep of an enormous _A_ , to the right by a sensuously curving _K_ :

NOT RUNNING AWAY.  
CHASING DOWN AN ALIBI.  
LEFT COLLATERAL.

Alicia smiles, relieved and puzzled and more charmed than she thinks she strictly should be. She’s not sure what to make of that final line until – showered and dressed and almost out the door – she spots Kalinda’s horseshoe pendant hanging from the reading lamp. It stops her short; she hesitates. She could clasp it around her neck, wear it under her turtleneck for only her to know. The thought is a comfort, but, she thinks, it’s a gesture too intimate, or more accurately, an intimacy of the wrong order. She lets the pendant rest a moment against her palm, then leaves it where it is, to be what Kalinda meant it to be: incentive to return.

She folds Kalinda’s note, instead, into the inner pocket of her blazer, steps over the pile of bobby pins on her bedroom floor, and shouldering her briefcase, swiping a sheaf of papers from the kitchen counter, walks out to meet the new day.


End file.
